Last week, Alex Tabarrok wrote a post at Marginal Revolution titled, “Is Social Security a Ponzi Scheme?”
His answer is yes.
That reminded me of what I wrote about Social Security in my 2001 book, The Joy of Freedom: An Economist’s Odyssey.
Here’s the start of the chapter.
I say we scrap the current [Social Security] system and replace it with a system wherein you add your name to the bottom of a list, and then you send some money to the person at the top of the list, and then you . . . Oh, wait, that IS our current system.
—Dave Barry, “Election could come down to who kisses most orifice,” Miami Herald, September 24, 2000
In 1991, one of my students, Stephen Banus, wrote to the Social Security Administration requesting information about the Social Security taxes he had paid and the benefits he could expect to receive. In the form letter he got back, Gwendolyn King, the commissioner of Social Security wrote:
I want to assure you that Social Security is built on a sound financial foundation. Social Security benefits will be there when you need them.
A prudent man and a good planner, Banus sent a similar request in 1995. This time, the message in the form letter was different. The commissioner of Social Security, Shirley Chater, wrote:
The latest report of the Social Security Board of Trustees says the Social Security system can pay benefits for about 35 more years. This means there’s time for Congress to make the changes needed to safeguard the program’s financial future.
In just four years, the commissioner had scaled back the blanket assurance that the benefits would be there “when you need them” to “about 35 more years.” What happened between 1991 and 1995?
Actually, nothing much happened in those four years except that the Social Security Commissioner in 1995 was perhaps less dishonest than her counterpart in 1991. The fact is that Social Security was never on a “sound financial foundation.” Contrary to the Social Security Administration’s official propaganda, there is no real trust fund. Roughly 80 percent of the payroll taxes collected from current workers today are sent out to current retirees, with only a brief stayover in Washington. The government spends the rest of the money on other items. The so-called trust fund contains bonds that the government has created. These bonds are simply IOUs from one branch of government to another. Chris Jehn, an associate director of the Congressional Budget Office, compares these bonds to notes that you write every year and put in a box for your child’s college education. The note says, “I owe $5,000 to my daughter’s college fund.” After 18 years of such saving, when your child turns 18, you open the box and out comes, not $90,000, but 18 worthless pieces of paper.
Those who retired in the early 1940s got huge benefits in return for paying low payroll taxes for only a few years. But as the system has “matured,” so that current retirees have been paying Social Security taxes for virtually their whole working lives, these retirees have received a much lower return.
A private citizen who set up such a financial chain letter would go to prison. In fact, he did. His name was Charles Ponzi, and he was arrested in 1920 for promising investors that they could double their money in 90 days and using the proceeds from later participants to keep his commitments to earlier ones. Thus was born the term “Ponzi scheme.”
There are two main differences between Ponzi’s original scam and the Social Security system. The first difference is that Social Security is run by government and, whatever its constitutionality and its questionable ethics, is legal. The second difference follows from the first: Whereas Ponzi had to rely on suckers, the government can and does use force. It’s true that the government refers to the Social Security payroll taxes—a hefty 10.6 percent (an extra 1.8 percent is for disability insurance and a further 2.9 percent, levied on all income from work, is for Medicare) of every worker’s earnings up to $80,400 in 2001—as “contributions.” But just try not “contributing.” That’s what Valentine Byler, an Amish farmer in New Wilmington, Pennsylvania, did in 1961. His religion taught that its members should care for each other and he tried to act on his religious beliefs by not paying Social Security taxes. The Internal Revenue Service responded by seizing three of his horses and selling them to collect $308.96 in unpaid taxes.
The Social Security Administration’s new line is that the fund is solvent until 2037. What the government officials who say that really mean is that by 2037, the last of the special federal government bonds that the Social Security Administration has bought and kept in the Social Security “Trust” Fund will be sold off to the U.S. Treasury. This “sale” of bonds is simply a transfer between the government’s left and right hands. To free up the cash to pay for these bonds, the Treasury will have to float new bonds, increase taxes, or cut other spending.
The more relevant date, therefore, is when the government’s benefit payments start to exceed its income from payroll taxes and from interest on these bonds—because that’s when the bonds will first be sold and the government will have to come up with extra cash. That date, the Social Security Administration now projects, will be 2024, about two-thirds of the way through the retirement of the baby boomers.
In the late 1990s, the government’s own actuaries estimated that, to maintain promised benefits, the tax rate would have to rise over the next decades from its current level of 12.4 percent to more than 18 percent. At an 18 percent rate, Social Security taxes would be about 7.5 percent of overall GDP. But total federal revenues from all sources, not just from the Social Security payroll tax, have stayed within a narrow range of 18 to 20 percent of GDP since the early 1950s. If this historical constant held, then the Social Security program alone would take about 40 percent of the total tax revenues collected by the federal government, leaving the remaining 60 percent to pay for Medicare, interest on the debt, defense, and everything else the federal government does. That doesn’t seem likely, which means that the odds of raising the Social Security tax rate substantially are, fortunately, fairly small. At some point in the future, therefore, benefits will have to be less than promised.
READER COMMENTS
Jose Pablo
Mar 11 2025 at 9:01pm
and replace it with a system wherein you add your name to the bottom of a list, and then you send some money to the person at the top of the list, and then you . . .
In fact, the whole US government’s debt is a Ponzi scheme, the new debt buyers (aka the new suckers) add their names to the bottom of a list, and then the government sends some money to the person at the top of the list (whose bonds have matured), and then you …
In the absence of new suckers, the US government couldn’t send the money owed to the debt investors at the top of the list.
There are two main differences between Ponzi’s original scam and the Social Security system
These are, in fact, the same two differences between Ponzi’s original scam and US government debt.
The interesting thing is that everybody knows this … and yet.
Thomas L Hutcheson
Mar 11 2025 at 10:12pm
You are under estimating the damage of accumulating government debt (deficits). If I understand your metaphor correctly there is no economic loss from these debt mediated transfers.
But that ignores that the amounts of deficit are borrowed and mostly displace private investment in order to finance the current transfer. The income not generated by the private investment not made is the “burden” that an earlier time period imposes on a later period.
Jose Pablo
Mar 12 2025 at 2:10pm
But that ignores that the amounts of deficit are borrowed and mostly displace private investment in order to finance the current transfer
No. And that is a common mistake. The amounts spent by the government displace private investment. For a given level of government expenditures deficits displace private investment much less than taxes. And taxes (no less expenditures) are the real alternative to deficits if you keep expenditures constant.
The problem is the resources “sucked” by the government. It is better to finance them with borrowed money rather than with taxes.
The income not generated by the private investment not made is the “burden” that an earlier time period imposes on a later period.
I fully agree with that! But note that this “burden” (the income not generated by the private investment) is bigger if you finance the expenditures with taxes than with debt (just take a look at the opportunity cost of both).
You are equating “deficits” with “expenditures”. Look, instead, at “deficits” are “taxes not collected”. They are a blessing compared with the alternative of financing all the expenditures with taxes.
In any case, all this doesn’t affect in any way the main claim that the US government debt is a Ponzi scheme as much as the Social Security: old investors can only be repaid with the money collected from new investors.
Thomas L Hutcheson
Mar 12 2025 at 3:26pm
Thanks for a straight contradictory view. I do not know of any empirical evidence that would indicate that a dollar borrowed displaces less private investment than a dollar taxed. It just seem obvious to me that it would. I’ll say that my “perception” is colored by viewing even our income tax as making some adjustments to make it more of a consumption tax, as I think it should be.
Would you opinion be the same, taxes displace more private investment than borrowing, if we DID have a consumption tax?
Jose Pablo
Mar 12 2025 at 9:30pm
I do not know of any empirical evidence that would indicate that a dollar borrowed displaces less private investment than a dollar taxed.
Neither do I. It would be nice to have it. But it seems straightforward to me. A dollar saved in taxes (= an extra dollar of deficit for any given level of expenditures) means more equity available to me to invest. A dollar less of government borrowing means more debt available to me to invest.
So, at the very minimum, deficits are a transfer of risk from private investors to the government/taxpayers as a collective. It isn’t difficult to imagine that that transfer of risk should result in a higher level of private investment.
Would you opinion be the same, taxes displace more private investment than borrowing, if we DID have a consumption tax?
A consumption tax will, I think, displace less private investment. Mainly because it will tax private investors less. However, the main reasoning (deficits are a transfer of risk from investors to the government that should encourage investment) would still (to a lesser extent) apply.
Thomas L Hutcheson
Mar 11 2025 at 10:04pm
I disagree completely with your characterization of Social Security. It is NOT, should not be, and never has been a pension plan. It is a government program to transfer income from people in one life circumstance (not old) to those in another life circumstance (old), just like automobile insurance transfers income from those who do not suffer accidents to those that do. Under current definitions of who is taxed how much and who benefits and by how much, more is being paid out than is taken in.
Personally, I think the definitions of revenue and benefits are wrong, mainly becasue revenues are less than outlays whihc contributes to the federal deficit and diverts resources from private investment to consumption.
Secondarily I think it is a mistake to use revenues from a capped wage tax to fund the benefits, as some of the taxed wage income might otherwise be saved. I prefer taxing consumption, say a consumption VAT, to generate the revenues for whatever level of benefits we decide to pay leading to an approximate zero deficit year by year. [A “trust fund mechanism is fine for avoiding literal year by year changes in the VAT rate, but I see no value in building up and them drawing down the fund over decades as the numbers of beneficiaries varies with demographic changes in order to avoid changes in the rate]
In addition to a VAT being a tax on consumption and not on income, it i probably easier to change to keep revenues in line with benefits and probably avoids some employment discouragement. [Probably as not all participants may see FICA taxes as part of remuneration equivalent to wages.)
FWIW I think the same logic applies to Medicare, ACA, Medicaid and unemployment insurance.
https://thomaslhutcheson.substack.com/p/the-ponzi-scheme-scheme
David Henderson
Mar 11 2025 at 11:52pm
You write:
Reread my post and you won’t see the word “pension” or the words “pension plan.” So you’re not disagreeing with me, completely or otherwise.
My post was about Social Security being a Ponzi scheme.
Thomas L Hutcheson
Mar 12 2025 at 3:39pm
I did misinterpret your meaning whihc I took to mean that SS was a Ponzi scheme instead of way of transferring income to people after a certain age.
That SS is literally not a Ponzi scheme seemed too obvious to be worth disputing. I understand a Ponzi scheme as a fraudulent promise of a return on an investment. But FICA tax payments are not an investment and there is no fraud. Maybe you think FICA is a bad kind of tax; I do too. Maybe you do not think it is a goo idea to transfer more to people after a certain age; I do. But levying a tax and transferring the proceeds to people over a certain age is just NOT a Ponzi Scheme.
Jose Pablo
Mar 12 2025 at 2:29pm
It is a government program to transfer income from people in one life circumstance (not old) to those in another life circumstance (old)
Yes. But this is not how it is “sold” to voters and taxpayers.
It would be much clearer (and that is always good) to explicity separate the contributions:
Dear taxpayer:
this is the amount you are saving in your government-managed pension plan. It goes to a government-managed pension plan under your name in which your rate of contributions and withdrawals would be carefully managed to avoid, to the best of our actuarial and financial knowledge, poverty in your old age.
This other is the amount collected from you that goes into a re-distribution mechanism that taxes active workers to provide old people, when required, with a complement to the proceeds of the individual pension pot built with the money mentioned in the previous paragraph.
We will do our best effort to keep this redistribution mechanism in place when you reach old age but, in any case, make all necessary provisions in case in the future a majority of voters consider it convenient to get rid of this redistribution mechanism (which could happen)
Mactoul
Mar 11 2025 at 10:14pm
Presumably it takes a legion of economists to run Social Security.
So, what does the questionable ethics of SS say about the ethics of economist profession, generally speaking?
What did the great or leading economists, past or present, Krugman for instance, say about ethics of SS? Or do they tend to avoid the topic?
David Henderson
Mar 11 2025 at 11:54pm
You write:
Your presumption is wrong. It takes a lot of actuaries and a few economists.
You write:
In the rest of my chapter, I talk about Samuelson praising Social Security as a Ponzi scheme. But if you want to avoid buying the book, read the Tabarrok post I linked to. He discusses both Samuelson and Krugman.
Rob Rawlings
Mar 11 2025 at 10:48pm
I had always assumed that one of the attributes of a true Ponzi Scheme is that it is mathematically certain that it will eventually collapse – the need for new investors grows exponentially and cannot be funded from a finite pool of investors. I do not believe this to be the case for Social Security. All that is needed is for the current workforce to be taxed sufficiently to pay the benefits of current retirees. With appropriate adjustments to the SS tax and (perhaps) benefits paid – this is almost certainly sustainable.
I’m not a fan of Social Security in its current form but I don’t think it is a Ponzi Scheme.
Jon Murphy
Mar 11 2025 at 11:13pm
I’m not trying to be a jerk, but how is your proposal different from a Ponzi scheme? A Ponzi scheme could be similarly adjusted. The fundamental problem remains, though.
Thomas L Hutcheson
Mar 12 2025 at 3:43pm
“Suitable adjusted” it woud cease to be a Ponzi scheme. 🙂
My hat, it has three corners.
Three corners has my hat,
If my hat had not three corners,
It woud not be my hat.
Rob Rawlings
Mar 12 2025 at 8:05pm
Its not “my proposal” – its just the mathematics of the situation – pay-as-you-go systems that have the tax and the benefits set at the right levels (as the US currently does not) are perfectly sustainable. They may not be the best way to fund people’s old-age but they are not Ponzi schemes.
David Henderson
Mar 11 2025 at 11:46pm
You write:
That’s your assumption, but there’s nothing in a Ponzi scheme that says it will collapse. If the pool starts small, it can go on for a long time–until people find out. That’s why I said:
We have found out about the government scheme, but we can’t get out.
Thomas L Hutcheson
Mar 12 2025 at 3:48pm
Get out? What’s to “get out” of? We are subject to laws that say under certain circumstances we pay money to the government. In other circumstances we receive money from the government.
David Henderson
Mar 12 2025 at 4:17pm
You write:
Social Security.
Rob Rawlings
Mar 12 2025 at 12:45am
Your post does a good job of demonstrating that Social Security is an ugly government program that will have to be severely adjusted if it is not to be a huge drag on the economy – but I still quibble that its not a Ponzi scheme!
Of course it comes down to definitions. I’m guessing based on your post that your definition might be something like “A Ponzi scheme is a financial arrangement in which returns to earlier participants are paid exclusively from the contributions of new participants”. Social Security clearly qualifies under this definition.
For me however the attribute of non-sustainability is also important as otherwise the definition would include sustainable non-government entities such as Burial Societies (and other Mutual Aid schemes) which most people would not view as Ponzi schemes. These types of organizations may have to adjust their fees from time-to-time to make sure they have enough money coming in to meet outgoings. Unlike Social Security however people who don’t like the new fees can just stop participating or not join in the first place – and I suppose I can sort of see why people are saying that Social Security with its mandatory participation is more like a Ponzi schema (using my definition) that would quickly become unsustainable (people would not opt-in) if it were not for this government backing.
steve
Mar 12 2025 at 11:14am
Intent also matters. The real goal of the Ponzi scheme is to make money for the person who started it. They pay out a few people early only to maintain an image of the plan working. There was never actually any intent to benefit anyone other than the schemer. In the most successful scams they convince people to re-invest supposed earnings and never actually payout anything.
Steve
Craig
Mar 12 2025 at 8:36pm
“Intent also matters.”
Yes, it does, good point.
Thomas L Hutcheson
Mar 12 2025 at 3:57pm
“A Ponzi scheme is a financial arrangement in which returns to earlier participants are paid exclusively from the contributions of new participants.”
That still does not make SS a “Ponzi Scheme.” SS is a dedicated tax to pay defined benefits to people over a certain age. No one “contributes” anything and the only “participation” is being subject to the laws defining the tax and benefits.
Craig
Mar 12 2025 at 8:38pm
I tend to agree with you on this one though I might derisively refer to it as a Ponzi scheme at some point just because I might do such a thing, but ultimately even though we call it an entitlement, the entire thing is ultimately a welfare scheme of sorts though obviously not one entirely dependent on one’s income.
john hare
Mar 12 2025 at 4:29am
At 68, I have been paying in to SS for 54 years as I started paying at 14. Reasonably invested, the money I have paid in would be well into the millions. No way will I ever get that much value back. I have worked to make sure that I am not dependent on SS to live the rest of my life.
If a graceful and legal way to wind the Ponzi scheme down and eventually eliminate it, I would give up any of my remaining “benefits” as part of the price. Too many people can’t do that as they have planned their retirement around the Ponzi scheme.
Thomas L Hutcheson
Mar 12 2025 at 4:13pm
It appears that you have the misapprehension of SS that I mistakenly thought that Henderson had, that SS is some sort (a sort that shares some features of a “Ponzi Scheme”) of pension plan.
Although it is a common misconception, you have not been “paying in” to a pension plan from which you will get back what was paid in +/- the return on those payments. You have been paying a tax whose proceeds are used to make transfers to people over a certain age.
Jose Pablo
Mar 12 2025 at 10:05pm
You have been paying a tax whose proceeds are used to make transfers to people over a certain age.
Perhaps. But if so, you have certainly been actively misled into believing otherwise, fostering a highly convenient political misconception. Contributing to this carefully maintained illusion:
a) Your contributions today play a key role in determining the benefits you will receive at retirement, reinforcing the false impression that you are funding your own pension.
b) Unlike federal income taxes, which finance other redistributive programs, Social Security contributions do not follow a progressive structure.
c) Any survey of actual contributors would likely reveal that most people firmly believe they are paying into their own retirement fund.
Thus, a far more accurate and honest statement would be:
Social Security is a system that redistributes money from taxpayers to retirees, fraudulently marketed to voters as—and widely believed to be—a method of financing one’s own pension that operates as a Ponzi scheme.
john hare
Mar 13 2025 at 4:34am
I know what SS is. I also know why it is a horrible thing for any reasonably wise investor in their old age.
Robert Long
Mar 12 2025 at 10:29am
OK, it is not a Ponzi Scheme, because it is legal and not fraudulent. But you say it is still one? I guess that slaughtering animals for food is murder, even if it is not.
But, yes, we have a problem. There are 5 well-known solutions. There are only 5. Why do you not present them?
1. End the system and let everyone know the government will not help you. This is America, work or die. You can phase this one in or jump off the cliff.
2. Raise the payroll tax. The 18% you cite is the over-estimate to transition to a fully funded system, but 14% continues the system we have.
3. Reduce benefits to 70% of PIA and remove any delay premium for delaying past 67.
4. Raise the retirement age to 70 – but this is just a stealth reduction in benefits to 70% (#3) as most take Social Security at 62 or 65 already.
5. Remove the Cap on Social Security taxes. Make those earning more than $176,100 pay into Social Security on all wages (and possibly all income.)
That is it. Choose your poison. I like #5.
Student
Mar 12 2025 at 10:32am
Certainly social security (SS) operates like a ponzi scheme for exactly the reasons you and Alex laid out. However, the main difference is that a Ponzi scheme is based on lies (fraud). Mr. Ponzu was lying to his investors by saying he was investing their money and paying returns. He was not.
Social security’s benefits (while maybe original over promised or misunderstood by many), taxes, eligibility rules, etc. are all transparent and subject to legislative change. There have been many changes in the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s. Like with most things these days, we can’t seem to get anything done or make any compromises, so we just do nothing (not even kick the can down the road)… but I digress.
I think the problem we find ourselves in is that SS is very hard to fundamentally change. Given the pay as you go setup, it’s difficult to end it and do something else. SS is really compulsory insurance against poverty in old age structured like a honest ponzi. It would be nice if we had made a better system way back when (was that possible?).
In the absence of it, we have a lot of elderly folks that must either simply die in the streets or in some infirmary or something like that… like back in the old days (note that Christian charity originally was primarily taking care of elderly widows, sending food to places of famine, and caring for the sick… not a coincidence). In early America, children generally took care of their parents and those that just died in the streets were those that didn’t have children or that had immoral children. Interestingly, this system still suffers from the same problem as children per person declines… the burden is less shared by many children and falls on 1 or 2. Shrinking population is still the fundamental problem.
The question becomes… what can we really do?
The easiest thing is to kick the can down the road again by increasing pay roll tax revenue (ending the cap or increasing the rate), raising the retirement age, reducing the benefit.
The second easiest thing would be to grow the base of contributors faster than the base of beneficiaries. I don’t see that forcing people to have kids (or more kids) is an option. Enticing them to seems likely to fail. So…. we could do it through immigration. Like the gold card, we “sell” worker permit cards, by requiring permitted workers to pay into the system but deny them SS benefits unless they were granted citizenship, which we could limit (basically a payroll tax for the pleasure of living and working here). It does seem this would result in the same problem in the end though, but for non citizen permitted workers… we must let the poverty stricken elderly former permitted non-citizen workers die in the streets as a consequence of the lack frugality or their deuce-seven starting hand (some people are basically endowed into poverty by being endowed lame and/or dumb).
The hardest thing to do is scrap the entire system and do something else… or let the lame and dumb elderly die in the streets.
What should be do?
David Seltzer
Mar 12 2025 at 1:28pm
David: SS is a coercive Ponzi scheme. To wit. This generation of workers are forcibly obligated to provide for strangers. Student asked, “what should we do?” One of your Ten Pillars is incentives. My fix, let people choose between paying into SS or investing in market indexes for retirement. The incentive you ask? A buy and hold strategy. Since 1928 average annualized returns for the S&P 500 are about 10.5%. Dividends are re-invested. About 7% compounded after adjusting for inflation. If an individual chooses SS, their opportunity cost(s) are forgone market returns.
Student
Mar 12 2025 at 2:48pm
I can’t make sense of how that would work.
How would you fund current retirees then? Would you just start paying retirees 30% of the current monthly benefit or whatever the sustainable percentage would be?
The inflows are already lower than outflows. Wouldnt this plan just exacerbate that problem? I wasn’t following this closely back in 2005… how did they propose to handle this back when this idea was being debated under W?
David Seltzer
Mar 12 2025 at 5:33pm
Student, thought provoking response. Ideas to answer how it would work for current SS recipients. We know that life expectancy is increasing, birth-rates have declined and gov budget deficit sits at two trillion. Some trade offs will have to be made. Twenty-somethings believe there will be no SS when they retire. Reduce their FICA by 20% and they use that money for IRA’s. The 20% reduction may mean 10%-15% reduced benefits to SS recipients. Better than the 30% reduction in entitlements in 2034. Instead of means testing for wealthy seniors, lower the capital gains rate in exchange for their SS payments. Just spit balling here. Really thorny problem.
Andrew_FL
Mar 12 2025 at 1:44pm
I disagree that this is the most likely outcome. I believe the virtually certain outcome is that taxes will be increased-above 18-20% of GDP. I do not see how it is politically possible to reduce benefits. I can very easily imagine, on the other hand, many tax increases the Federal government could foist upon the people. My guess is we end up with a European style VAT. Those countries do not have VAT instead of income tax (whenever I mention that we will have a VAT, someone mentions they think that would be great instead of an income tax. That is not what I am saying. That will absolutely not happen.) they have a VAT and income tax.
Unfortunately I do not see how the US can continue to be a low tax country. The political constituencies for government benefits are simply too large and powerful. I envision a grim future where we are taxed at 30+% forever, and economic growth ceases.
Richard Fulmer
Mar 12 2025 at 3:31pm
In Flemming v. Nestor (1960), the Supreme Court ruled that Social Security is not an entitlement. Workers do not have a legally binding contractual right to receive what they paid into the system, and their benefits can be altered or eliminated by Congress at any time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flemming_v._Nestor?
By contrast, in Goldberg v. Kelly (1970), the Court ruled that welfare is an entitlement and that the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment requires a full evidentiary hearing before a recipient of government benefits can be deprived of their benefits.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldberg_v._Kelly?
Craig
Mar 12 2025 at 8:40pm
Part of the problem is that the surplus was invested solely in treasuries. The flip side is that if it were run like a sovereign wealth fund or perhaps something like CALPERS, perhaps it wouldn’t look so much like a Ponzi scheme at the moment. Of course the drawback is that government would be investing more actively and that comes with caveats all its own.
Jose Pablo
Mar 12 2025 at 9:40pm
Of course the drawback is that government would be investing more actively and that comes with caveats all its own.
However, this wouldn’t be an issue if the government were restricted to investing the fund solely in a broad index representing the American economy (for instance an ETF tracking the Russell 2000).
This wouldn’t necessarily increase risk, either. After all, the value of U.S. government debt is ultimately tied to the performance of the very companies in the Russell 2000.
Interestingly, it is the “full faith and credit” of American businesses that underpin government debt.
Richard Fulmer
Mar 13 2025 at 12:09am
The simplest, most politically acceptable, and most expedient way to shore up Social Security may be to steeply and progressively increase taxes on benefits. Doing so would be a relatively easy way to effectively means test benefits without the administrative burden of assessing individuals’ financial situations.
I’d prefer that the system be privatized, but progressive taxation is probably the path of least resistance, so I expect that’s the path Congress will take.